marginalia: (fuck me up lan zhan)
I keep SAYING that The Untamed is Chinese lotrips and as if to prove it we have goddamned Yibo as a goddamned elf (my thread).

Anyway this is my life now, spending untold hours scrolling through Weibo and Twitter and Tumblr and Douyin looking at pictures of The Untamed cast saying "look at this asshole" over and over again. But with *love*.

BUT GUESS WHAT. This life can be yours too because apparently The Untamed is coming to Netflix on Friday & then everyone can be awash in Soft Boy Content (tm). I refer you to this post again to see if it might be your jam (I hope it is). Netflix is describing them as soulmates, which, accurate, but also which caused Untamed Twitter *and* Weibo to melt down in a truly glorious fashion.

As for me, if this turns out to be for real, I will be resubscribing to Netflix to get my fill of those sweet, sweet professional subtitles. What a relief.

Since I am unable to love anything in a normal way, of course now all adjacent Mainland pop culture is taking over my life. Adjacent meaning anything with the cast, starting with XZ & WYB, & then also the growing world of Chinese BL adaptations.

So, I watched all of Guardian, an objectively terrible show & the online translation of the novel is unreadable (worse than MDZS!)((I KNOW)), but there’s great fic and honestly it’s just a matter of time before I rewatch to write my own. I am unable to resist that stoic-shithead brothers-in-arms vibe, apparently. Plus Guardian has a time travel element - they meet each other for the first time twice, let me bathe in the angst - and the classic "no matter how long it takes I will find you again" trope, please inject it into my veins.

I’ve also started Oh! My Emperor, which is great fun to try to explain to people, because it’s basically if, like, One Direction starred in a supernatural medieval time travel comedy. Because the majority of the cast is X Nine, XZ’s idol group.

And of course, it turns out XZ himself is the softest of soft boys, & this week they doled out this interview, one question a day, breaking my goddamned heart. (Today’s question isn’t up there right now, but it should be soon.)

I’m stoked to have the fandom grow, anyway. There’s So Much Content! I have a list of fic ideas the length of my arm, including a series of shorts I hope to have started by the end of the week.

But I am terrible at these spaces, so any Suibians who wander by, please spare me from shouting into the void about all the beautiful CQL idiots on Twitter, thank you. This is the excellent content you can expect.
marginalia: (fuck me up lan zhan)
Okay kids I finished watching The Untamed this week & I need to not be alone in this situation. I thought I was gonna have to write a goddamned old school pimping post myself but thank fuck for Tumblr. (Note: Am I going to have to learn how to use Tumblr? Signs point to yes.)

ANYWAY. This is the best one & I especially point you to section 7. This one is pretty good too. (Both of these folks describe themselves as old, & I will bet five American dollars I am at least a decade older than both of them.)

My addendums:

* Seriously, the beginning is SO CONFUSING. I went back & watched episode 1 about halfway through and it made SO MUCH MORE SENSE. Also having read the book by then helped. Basically, it's a soap opera, and for a long time I was like "I don't know about this" and then suddenly it took over my life.

* The book is. Well. I don’t know how much of it is the book & how much is the translation, but it is not terrific writing-wise, and it’s also not terrific gay rep wise (because it’s a BL novel), especially to me, constant eye-roller at fandom top/bottom fights. So honestly, I’ve found the series more satisfying in a lot of ways because censorship required they cut the (cringey) gay stuff, but they went ALL IN on the *~romance~*. I could write an essay on the use of the closing-title love ballad and perhaps someday I will.

* I have described literally half of the characters as cinnamon rolls at some point, including (especially!) Wen Ning who is basically a zombie. So there’s that.

* It’s not great for the ladies, if that’s a deal breaker.

* This is my favorite gif set from the whole damn series.

* There are a few ways to watch it, but I recommend Tencent’s YouTube playlist here. I watched a lot of it on Viki first because they released episodes faster, but not only do they have commercials, their commercials aren’t timed to the show, so they’re just maddening. So now that it’s all out, just YouTube it. That’s the official channel; it’s fine.

* I have downloaded like five versions of this gif. (This actor, Wang Yibo is a tiny infant child, & I have no idea what casting magic led him to this character, because just seeing him as a dude in the world it never would have occurred to me - though he is a dancer, so that part makes sense. He’s the only cast member who read the cut parts of the novel, which is perfect, because for most of the novel LWJ’s the only one aware he's in love anyway.)



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January 2025

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